Bleader

Remember that housing and recycling funding you were promised?

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (PDF) isn't buying Mayor Daley's claim that the city has committed "$40 million in new money" for affordable rental housing and rental assistance. Policy director Julie Dworkin says the city is "just recounting existing resources." Says the press release: "This $40 million includes $13 million in state rental subsidies . . . funds previously committed by downtown housing developers who received a density bonus -- much of which has not actually been collected yet -- as well as a portion of existing TIF funds." Hmm, maybe what we need is a new TIF district established that is gerrymandered to include all existing homeless shelters in the city, so that they can get in on some of that slush-fund action.

From the Chicago Recycling Coalition's Fall 2006 newsletter, "What Goes Around" (not online, best as I can tell): "Back in April 2005 the city launched a small, source-separated pilot program in the Beverly neighborhood. But with no expansion in sight, last January Alderman Joe Moore introduced an order requiring Chicago to abandon the blue bag for real recycling, and 25 of his colleagues joined as cosponsors. Then during the April 2006 Earth Week, the Commissioner of the Department of the Environment told the local press that within a month a new recycling program would be announced. And now this September Mayor Daley confirmed that a source-separated multi-bin program would soon be installed in a number of wards . . . . but as of yet, the new bins, truck routes, and educational materials have yet to appear." (Yesterday word came that curbside recycling will hit the 5th and 8th wards on the south side next April.)